At 11:16 11/21/96 -0500, David L. Moore wrote:> The BAGD lexicon gives the active sense of the verb as "lead astray,>cause to wander;" Louw and Nida define it similarly. But isn't PLANAW>cognate to the word for *planets* (viz. ASTERES PLANHTAI of Jude 13) and>dependent on the same root meaning. Did 1st-Century cosmology think of the>planets as *led* about or, rather, as wandering according to their own course?

The planets were the "wandering stars." Their position relative to the
"fixed" stars changes from night to night. If observed over a course of
time, they will appear to travel across the background of the stars,
sometimes even going backwards for a brief period of days. Ptolomy
postulated the existence of "epicycles" to account for this retrograde
motion, but today's heliocentric model for the solar system works much
better.